Doctorkenyon’s Weblog

New Blog

I’ve started a new blog but with the same purpose, to carry on my writing about Journalism. I’ll also be keeping a diary about the Innocence Project I’ve started.

Find it HERE.

Romero strikes back

I think allowances should be made for crimes that are also very very funny.

2008 Review

So the last few weeks have been a mad dash of group projects and Christmas shopping, survival wasn’t guaranteed. I’ve finally found a spare 30 mins to sprawl on the sofa and look back at the year in terms of news and journalism. Now I’ve stopped to think about it, a heck of a lot has happened in a single year.

The US election and the credit crunch have provided the biggest stories and given us both great hope and despair going in to 2009. I still think some smaller, weirder stories are well worth rooting out as well.

Some of the best news stories we’ve followed have had twists and turns aplenty. The revelations about the canoe man’s return and Shanon Matthews’ abduction made fantastic front pages.

I learned the differences in reporting for television radio and print the hard way. Lumbering across the New Forrest with a camera kit quickly taught me to bring a crew… or at least money for a taxi. Stories need to be planned a lot more in greater detail when relying on audio and filmed footage. I also made a few realizations about group work. I won’t mention these in polite company.

Finally, I enjoyed the film Frost/Nixon. It was a nice insight into both the politics and journalism of the seventies. It discussed interview technique and spent a lot of time devoted to the morality of being a journalist. Should we pay for interviews? Highly recomended.

Onwards to 2009 then…

Village shop for sale

Residents near Winchester are rallying together to save their local shop from closure by buying it themselves. Sparsholt villagers will be going head to head with an anonymous bidder for ownership of the shop and post office.

The current owners of 14 years, Linda Scorey and Stella Neaves will be retiring due in part to three armed robberies the latest of which saw staff threatened with a brick last year.

The community has formed the Sparsholt Village Shop Association and hopes to raise £5,000 of the £40,000 needed by selling shares of £25 each to local residents. They stepped in when it seemed there were no other potential buyers to keep the shop going.

Stewart Wooles is on the association’s board, he said: “There wasn’t any outside interest in keeping the shop going until recently, we were worried that if something was not done they would hand over the keys and something important to the village would be lost.

“Although we need the support of Linda and Stella we would be sitting on opposite sides of the table for negotiations. It’s only very late in the day that a third party has become interested.”

Linda Scorey said: “It’s a very awkward situation as the shop is still on the market. We’ll know more in a weeks time.” Mrs Scorey declined to comment further.

If Sparsholt residents successfully purchase the shop they will hold an election of shareholders to decide who will run the establishment and have post master/mistress training.

U.S. world position

Not only does this video support one of the more interesting news headlines today but it’s also hilarious. I do, of course, point this out for purely professional reasons.